The Curatorial Roundtable, an international forum for curators and institutional leaders to discuss formative and current projects, is hosted by Steven Henry Madoff, Founding Chair of the MA Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Adam Budak is the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). a curator of contemporary art and author of texts on art. He served as Artistic Director of Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover, Germany (2020–2024), where he developed an interdisciplinary curatorial program focused on the notions of tenderness, anabasis, and amor mundi, and realized exhibitions that, among others frameworks, reflected the avant-garde legacy of El Lissitzky and the topicality of the political thought of philosopher Hannah Arendt. Previously, Budak was Artistic Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery in Prague (2014–2020), and has also held curatorial positions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and Kunsthaus Graz. From 1997 to 2002, he was Curator of Contemporary Art at Bunkier Sztuki Gallery in Kraków. He co-founded the first postgraduate curatorial studies in Poland at the Jagiellonian University and taught at its Institute of Public Affairs. 

Implementing the act of domestication in the biotope of an organic art institution, Budak’s curatorial work focuses on the ecology of affect, the laws of hospitality and the poetics of critical intimacy. His interdisciplinary practice is informed by a sensitivity to space and performativity. He has curated numerous international biennials, including Manifesta 7; the Gherdëina Biennale; the Prague Biennale; and the Polish Pavilion (2003), the Estonian Pavilion (2013), and the Latvian Pavilion (2024) at the Venice Biennale. He also served as a commissioner of the Czech Pavilion (2017, 2018, 2019). Some of his curatorial achievements include the first Polish retrospective of Louise Bourgeois (Zachęta – National Gallery of Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2003) and the first German exhibition of Paula Rego (Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover 2023).

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